We Bury Our Sins Here
by Spylace
Summary: In a world where Yamamoto disappears shortly after his third birthday, three men are fated to meet albeit through different circumstances. 188069 or some combination of Hibari, Yamamoto and Mukuro


**Title: **We Bury Our Sins Here  
**Summary:** In a world where Yamamoto disappears shortly after his third birthday, three men are fated to meet albeit through different circumstances.  
**Rating:** PG15  
**Pairing:** 188069 (or some combination of Hibari, Yamamoto and Mukuro)  
**Notes:** I have stress. To deal with it, I give it to other, fictional people.  
**Disclaimer:** Amano Akira owns this series.  
**Warning:** Hints of dubcon, noncon, minors, prostitution and the works.  
**Word count:**5000~

.

He killed a man when he was fourteen.

It was in self-defense.

It does not matter.

"Ageha..." Obligingly, he tilts his head back and lets the man slobber all over the crooked lines of his neck, past the scars and the heated skin. The spittle leaves a cold, slimy trail down his throat and inwardly he shudders though he lets out a faux keen of desire and lifts his legs, using his heel as a spur. The man does not need further encouragements and comes inside of him. As a parting gift, Takeshi allows him a breath before sticking a needle through his eye.

.

Hibari is a regular at the Sisters, more interested in gossip than any woman. He has pegged the other man as a fag from the start and he isn't wrong, but he isn't right either. They exchange knowing nods, a slight quirk of his lips and the familiarity making the other man stiffen. All lanterns are lit and the decrepit building comes to life as though it's a full house. Soon, Takeshi is ushered out with an apologetic grin.

He doesn't mind; if he is paid to stand around and do nothing, it is no skin off his nose. Hibari doesn't like crowds and never stays that long anyway though he pays lavishly. There will be enough cash to go around and he will be safe enough—at least until the next job comes around.

Takeshi sits in the shadows, rummaging around his breast pocket for a cigarette when a stranger sides up to him and offers him a light. Spooked, he looks to the stranger sharply because the other man is very good to have snuck up on him unnoticed never mind find him in the first place. His breath hitches for a moment but only just. Immediately, his expression smooths into a matching smile, the nicotine hitting his bloodstream as the lighter disappears into the stranger's sleeve with a clever flick of his wrist.

"You're new here." He says breezily, chewing around the butt of his cigarette in a nervous habit he'd never been able to break. When he was young, it used to be his nails. He supposes there is a correlation between his oral fixation and sucking cock—then there are always the odd ones who likes pleasure in hand with pain.

"What gave me away?" the stranger chuckles, leaning against the wall tattooed with enough graffiti to make a saint weep.

"Men don't come here to stare at other men."

"Oh, then what are you?"

"Checking out early." He nods towards the building Hibari has gone into; guessing correctly that the stranger is one of his.

"What a coincidence." The other man chuckles bitterly, "so am I."

The end of his cigarette flares bright and in the dusk, he could have sworn that the man's right eye flickers red. Takeshi isn't a superstitious man, but his heart skips a beat and his nails scrape briefly against the crumbling cinder blocks. The other man leans close, curious and intimate like the western black cats. "Tell me, where would I go to stare at other men?"

Takeshi blows out a stream of smoke, mindful of the feather-light fingerprints climbing up his jaw.

"Ageha." He says finally. "I'm Ageha."

"Ageha." The stranger repeats, tasting the syllables on his foreign tongue. "I am Mukuro, pleased to make your acquaintance."

.

"Why Mukuro? You're not Japanese."

"I thought it sounded nice. Very... mysterious."

"Hahaha, I guess so."

"Is Ageha your real name?"

"Depends, how much are you paying?"

"Your name is for sale?"

"Everything is for sale at the right price."

"Hmm... how much are you charging?"

"Ten million yen."

"No sex is worth that much—I might as well buy myself a harem of nubile young boys."

"Yeah but they can't do this,

"Or this,

"Or this,

"Or this."

"Aren't you clever? I do like the mouth on you."

"Really? Hibari says that it's my worst feature."

"So tell me. How long have you been watching Kyoya?"

.

His breath fogs up the mirror as his client convulses underwater, throwing off waves of froth and lavender-scented suds, trapped beneath the arch of his right foot. Unfortunately, Takeshi had been caught unawares in the bath, the amorous touches suddenly turning dark, the firm grip on his hips dragged bloody. It was a stroke of luck that he had been able to slip his metaphorical noose and drag the man under. His chest still heaves with the effort and there is a trickle of blood from one nostril that he cannot stop.

Takeshi toys with a needle, long and heavy between his fingers. Ageha has been unable to make his kill tonight and his master will be displeased. Bubbles erupt, the client gives one final jerk and lays still but he does not yet move his foot. Instead, he pushes down on the soft flesh, wincing when he feels his skin pull and the claw marks across his hip reopen.

By chance, he happens to glance on a bloated hand, floating listlessly in the water as he drives a knife in the man's spine and twists. A ring blinks up at him bright and blue, even as blood spreads in lurid reds through the water. Puzzled, he pulls it off the thick fingers and inspects it in the warm light of the bathroom, chilled when the wintry blue gem seems to burn from within.

Heart pounding, he quickly clenches the ring in his fist, hiding it out of sight.

Later, after facing Ebi's severe disappointment at the assassination of Tao Jiang, the CEO of En Weapons Manufacturing, he loops the ring through a light chain and ties it to his wrist. It is his first rebellion since his first kill.

.

He throws the man out of the house, the girls twittering behind him as Mukuro waits in the shadows, his face a mask of amusement.

"You are surprisingly good at this."

"Ha ha, I should be." He answers ruefully, shaking his head. "Gets easier every year."

"Yet you still turn tricks on the side."

"This isn't anything I can put on my resume."

Mukuro drew his mouth into a kiss and breathed out. "I don't mind."

Takeshi laps delicately at his throat. "Do you know that you're being watched?"

.

Ebi uses him like a rod, sparingly but too hard.

Everyone has heard of the 'Needle Thief' on their island, a moniker given when a slew of bodies turned up with identical wounds, a tiny hole boring through their eyes. Takeshi steals lives using needles and he doesn't regret it, most of them deserve it anyways. But he is kept in torpor like a falcon jessed for long stretches of time because legends are far more frightening than a random hustler who spreads his legs at the drop of a hat. Hibari has always been on his list, number indefinite for he has gained too much too fast and the last thing Ebi wants is for the newly-fledged lark to cast an eagle's shadow across his territory.

Slowly but surely, Hibari climbs the ladder.

Ebi orders his execution at the nearest convenience.

Takeshi holds his breath before spilling the details about his whereabouts, the visit to the Sisters and Mukuro who blew his cover before it even began. His master is aware of his liaison with the foreigner, delights in it even like the perverted fuck he is. But withholding information is just as potent as giving it and there are slivers of data that slip through the cracks, too few to be detectible but enough that they will punch sizeable holes in the next few stunted moves.

"Have you told them anything?"

"Only that they are being watched."

"But you haven't betrayed me yet have you Ageha?"

Takeshi shudders in his grip, his stomach clotting inside out as Ebi peppers his wrist with light kisses like snowflakes hitting his skin. Ebi isn't bad-looking and on the few nights he spends in his companies, drunk on wine and so high that he swore butterflies were eating through the ceiling, he pretends that Ebi isn't a sick bastard who passes around children like used needles.

"Think of your poor sister won't you? How devastated she would be to learn that you have turned your back on us."

This is not a warning.

The time of warnings has passed and he quavers down to his bones as he palms Ebi's erection and feels it jump through his trousers. Ebi shows no outward reaction but crinkles his eyes with sickening paternity.

"Fly Ageha, blind them for me."

.

The ring is.

He never takes it out to look at it. Since the first night, he's always had it stashed under the couch with too many broken springs. It's wrapped in newspaper, cloaked with dust. He hasn't had the time to take it out and look at it properly and never desires to—too anxious about the implications of what he had done and why.

Takeshi is no aficionado of jewelry but he knows that it isn't an engagement ring or even a marriage ring. The crystal may be bright and true, wrong color to be a diamond and the design too feminine. But the ring itself is scuffed too badly and marred; dull despite the many polishing he gives it with the help of his sleeve. He doesn't know why anyone would wear such a thing unless it had some sentimental value. From what he has seen from Jiang Tao, he knows that is not the reason.

But the blue is beautiful and he sometimes glimpses it in his dreams, the pale hoarfrost at the center of a butane fire.

.

On the good days, the better days, days when he is not limping or bruised from his latest conquest, he visits the small bakery near the subway where Haru works, ordering the cheapest coffee—560 yen, clearly a rip-off—and a wedge of cheesecake he sprinkles liberally with cinnamon before eating. He sits alone near the window, deflecting the attentions of teenagers and curious women with odd quirks of his lips.

It's nearly nine when Haru finishes.

"Takeshi" Haru says briskly, shaking flour and soda out of her hair with a quick shake before pinching his elbow and dragging him out of the bakery. She barely pauses as he hands her a bento he prepared before he left his place, her heels fiercely clacking down the streets. "Don't you have work?"

"Can't I visit my favorite sister every now and then?"

"Your only sister." Haru corrects jealously and at the women who stare at them as they leave, she spits a short 'harpies' before moving on. "I've had no less than seven girls asking you who you were and if you were a regular. Men too." She subsides, staring mournfully at the layer of green stacked conspicuously on top.

"Ebi's men?" He asks idly, reminding her that she needs to eat something other than processed meat and also, something about scurvy. In response, Haru extols the virtues of multi-tablet vitamins in all their adorable incarnations. But her eyes are sharp as she swiftly glances around, pressing herself close against him as he wraps a warm arm around her shoulders.

"No, I mean, the first guy was genuine. Cute too." He makes a face. "But the second and third, they were there a while, not ordering anything. The manager finally threw them out after six."

Takeshi hums the Bohemian Rhapsody and hugs her close, twirling around when they stop at the crosswalk, earning the fond and amused glances of everyone around them. Haru is the only one he really cares about. If he did not love her, there would be nothing for him to love. If he doesn't have her, he has no heart.

He and Haru sleep together, not together-together, but together like when they were kids huddled together in the dark, knowing nothing of the fumbling between the sheets in the night. Haru smells clean like soap and a bit of warmth from the bakery. She looks tired, her bird-frail ribs floating up and down like a boat bobbing in the water.

Haru was taken off the streets when she was thirteen, fresh from the plane, shiny-faced and ready to immerse herself in a culture she knew little to nothing about. When he killed the man, sold himself a thousand times over just so Ebi would let her go, they looked for her parents, shuffled through yellowed newspaper and missing persons reports.

Around the time she disappeared, they discovered the first few photos of a bright young girl and trace reports of how she spoke little Japanese. They found out that her mother killed herself three months after her disappearance. Her father fled back to Australia out of grief. They ended up holding each other and crying all night.

.

He is playing with fire.

Despite all pretenses, Takeshi isn't a complete idiot. Mukuro and Hibari aren't bad men but they aren't good men either and they will land on their feet whether or not he means for them to. He knows that it is foolish for Ageha to come in to play this early so he becomes a double agent of sorts, working for no one but himself as he gives both parties what they want to hear. And if he feeds one more than the other, that is his decision and his alone.

Takeshi continues to go about his business as though it was situation normal. He frequents Mukuro's bed on the side, the man says he is relaxing, and he turns tricks in the corner when he thinks nobody is looking. He can bench press three-hundred pounds and when he is not playing the whore, he is the nightmares of men influential enough to court Ageha.

After Mukuro falls asleep in their bed, he pads out to the kitchen wearing nothing but an oversized shirt. He doesn't expect Hibari to be there, scowling at fine print, ruminating upon the virtues of pudding. Takeshi clears his throat though he shouldn't have, not really. The other man wouldn't have lasted in their line of work had he been stupid enough to turn his back on him.

He tries anyway because what does he have to lose?

"Little whore..." Hibari breathes when Takeshi encroaches upon his space, long arms trapping him against the counter. He offers no resistance, curling a hot fist around his neck. But the three rings on his fingers are like a silent threat as they scrape the fine hairs beneath his skull. He stifles laughter, shoulders quivering as he presses a quick kiss to his pulse, hips sliding skillfully between his knees as he white-knuckles the counter, holding himself on the thin line between business and pleasure and the little orphan inside him reborn as a swallowtail butterfly.

The pudding, a plastic spoon stuck halfway in, topples over, slick and silky in the stagnant light. This is not love, this is not sex. This is what few languages men like they are fluent in because actions do not lie, touches do not lie, and when they are staring into each other's eyes, glint of teeth like knives buried in ice, they do not lie.

.

"I want to show you something."

Mukuro holds out a small cube, smaller than the width of a palm, black with petals of violets decorating its edges. The heavy rings on his fingers, not solely for decorations as he found out, light up with an eerie indigo fire and the box breaks open, setting up a storm. Through the flutter of wings, Takeshi sees that the other man's eye is red and slit like the underside of a bell or whatever unearthly creatures that crawl in the dark. He stumbles back in surprise, dropping to his knees when an entire wall throws off livid blue sparks.

He can't seem to stop staring.

"Wow." He blurts out and Mukuro smiles, sections of the room collapsing back into its normal appearance until only six butterflies remain, lighting Mukuro's long hair like sapphire stars. "They're—" dangerous, he can feel it. Just as he can feel when a job is about to go south or a dog frothing at the mouth is not something to be approached. "—beautiful."

Mukuro hums in agreement. "You may touch them if you wish. They're names are... unimportant I suppose. They are box animals, fed by dying-will flames." Takeshi holds still as one lands on his face, its wings spread and shuttering, his vision sometimes light and sometimes black. "I need you to tell me if you've ever seen one before."

"I think," He answers mildly, trying hard not to sneeze. "I would have noticed a room full of glowing animals."

"I suppose you're right." With a sigh, the butterfly extinguishes itself. Mukuro peers at him close, like he is something to be studied and not a whore-slash-informant he has been bedding every other night. He had upped his ante when he made a move on Hibari. Mukuro had an exhibitionist streak a mile wide and sometimes the diminutive man liked to watch like a maestro directing a concert, touching himself whenever one held the other in submission.

The sad thing is, this is one of his more vanilla relationships. "You would tell me if you knew something wouldn't you?"

Takeshi steadily meets the odd-eyed gaze.

"I've seen the rings."

He notices them more and more now. The ostensibly gaudy shapes Mukuro never takes off, the simple bands of blues and violets on Hibari's left hand. At the Sisters, he's seen men come in, obviously out of town, laughing and shooting lewd remarks as much as they threw money and trinkets like it was water. The men never took them off even when few of the younger girls, upset at being proven they were the other women, asked them to.

Had they been engagement rings or marriage rings, if they had been pretending that they were young and unmarried and didn't fuck little boys and girls for release, they would have been dropped inside a pocket someplace, not to be touched until a shower and pomade washed everything away. But they aren't engagement rings or marriage rings after all. They are yet another kind of promise in the strange world they live in.

"Where?"

"A client's." He responds vaguely, eyeing the skull-faced ring on Mukuro's hand. "I wondered but Ebi told me not to worry. Said it was..."

"Yes?"

"A revolution."

.

"There's been a new development."

"Hm?"

"The Vongola." He emphasized, raising an eyebrow. Ebi never falters in his steps, graceful and daunting as he parries imaginary foes. "They know the box weapons are here."

He could have heard one of his needles drop in the silence. Immediately, the sword slices through the air and rests at his temple.

"And what do you know of the box weapons?"

"Only what I've been told, nothing more."

Ebi hums.

"It seems that not even the foreign dogs can resist your charms."

"Yes sir."

"Will he notice?" He asks silkily, dragging a hand through his unruly hair. "If I cut you, will he get him... hot?"

"I wouldn't risk Hibari sir."

Ebi let out a bark of laughter.

"Hibari, Hibari, Hibari, a thorn at my side, thinks he's better than me. I want him dealt with."

"Sir?"

"Tonight."

He finishes his kata with a flourish.

"Fly Ageha."

Takeshi bows.

"As you wish."

.

He has a gift, a curse, an affliction or ability. Sometimes it's one, sometimes it is all of the above and sometimes he is scared when pale lightning arcs across his knuckles as he focuses, grounds himself and lays his hands flat against another's body. Mukuro mewls in response and stretches shamelessly beneath him as he kneads the taut muscles, wondering what the man actually does when he is not around to have so many knots in his back. He cannot possibly be Hibari's body guard, he is too—pretty, thin, gentle—nice to be one. But then again, he used to be nice too.

The other man further relaxes, his eyes falling half-mast. Takeshi likes Mukuro, they never pretend to be more than what they are and he appreciates the honesty, genuinely enjoys their working relationship. In time with his breathing, he lets his fingers skitter down the other man's spine. He had tucked a needle behind one ear earlier and he pulls it out, letting it dance between his fingers and testing its weight as his conscious makes a rare show at the back of his mind, staying his hand just long enough for Mukuro to nod off into sleep, soft, pliant and vulnerable like any other mark he's struck in the past.

It will be painless.

"Ageha?"

A gun whispers gently against the back of his head.

"Don't move."

He closes his eyes.

.

"Strange."

Hibari grunts irritably as Mukuro rubs and flexes his fingers, throwing off dark blue fire at the tips.

"Well what do you expect me to say? I am fine."

"He was using dying-will flames."

"Was he?" Mukuro asks in the interest of peace. "Dare I ask which one?"

"Rain." Hibari spits the word as though it has offended him personally.

"Well that's not too bad, explains why I've been sleeping so well. Oh don't fret; you've done worse to me in the past."

The other man rumbles deep in his chest, dangerous, and Takeshi cocks his head back with keen interest.

"So you caught me. Will you be handing me over to the police?"

"That would be mercy." Hibari snaps.

"Why now?" Mukuro nods towards Hibari. "We were getting along so well."

Takeshi leans back. "Whores don't kiss and tell."

"I thought I was paying you to."

"You thought wrong."

Mukuro asks quietly, "What does Ebi want?"

.

"Your name is not Ageha is it?"

"Haha, nope."

.

"What binds you to him? What does he have over you that you'd willingly stay with him?"

.

"People have been looking for you."

.

"What happens when they found out you've failed?"

.

"I think you know already."

.

They're being followed.

"Takeshi! Hi! What are you doing here?"

"Hey, I'm free today so I wanted to take you out."

Haru's face falls. "I can't. I have a job interview... ha-hee!"

He gives her a hard kiss before leaving her. Dazed, she can do little more than to stumble after as he ducks around the wandering populace, hunching over to make himself appear smaller than he actually is. She catches up with him and grabs his hand, squeezing it before, tucking it close between their bodies. To unsuspecting passersbys, they look like a young couple out for an afternoon stroll. The truth is they are anything but.

"Takeshi," she swallowed, "what are you doing?"

"Shh..."

"Oh my god."

"I'm sorry."

They quicken their pace. "What happened?"

"Not here."

He and Haru dive into an aisle of lingerie when a man sweep past, sticking out like a sore thumb with in his dark trench coat. Takeshi takes her jacket and hangs it surreptitiously on the rack before flatfooting it to the nearest saleswoman and flashing Hibari's card. The saleswoman brightens up immediately and coos at Haru for her fair complexion and slim figure, keeping a firm grip on the slip of plastic like a well-trained harpy.

And while Haru is sufficiently occupied, he sends a text with his cellphone and slips it into her bag. He goes down into the food court, anywhere with a crowd. From the periphery of his vision, he can see the men close in and smiles sadly to himself as he helps a little girl to her feet and dusts off her white stockings. The mother apologizes over and over even as he grabs a fork and conceals it in his breast pocket. At least, he observes grimly, they're preventing unnecessary casualties. The swimming pool on the basement floor is closed for cleaning and he is surrounded.

"Ageha."

He raises his hands. "Ha ha, you caught me."

Something rolled towards him, rounded and frayed. It was Ebi's head. He froze.

"Where are they?"

"You're too late." Takeshi said idly, examining Ebi's head before discreetly rolling it aside into the bubbling Jacuzzi. "They're gone."

"Fuck" Someone spits and Takeshi smiles. The expression on the first man's face is ugly.

"You lie. They wouldn't leave without the second box, now where are they?"

"I don't," he tells them gently, "kiss and tell."

A quick flicker of fire and a falcon spills out of the box, screaming like a banshee. Several men fall to their knees, clutching their heads. Glass shatters overhead and they are plunged into darkness only the eerie blue flames of the mist bird flickering up and down the walls like a ghost light. Takeshi takes his chance and stabs his fork in the leader's breast, twisting it in when the man falls back with a cry.

Hands claw at him, tear at his clothes and pull his hair. It isn't anything new and he sticks one of his needles in a man's eye as more and more box weapons are released, a veritable menagerie of creatures that light up the room better than any lamp. The leader is quickly swallowed up by his men though his bird still flies. A fist in his stomach and Takeshi falls to his knees as a green-faced mandrill pounces on his back and tries to break his neck.

Blue fire runs down one arm as he stabs his second needle in a red-painted bobcat which swerves and dives into the pool. He gets to his feet, feeling sick and disoriented as his spine is awashed simultaneously with heat and cold. Takeshi is used to working daylight hours, Ageha the dark. This is neither and he struggles on stubbornly on one good leg and several broken toes. He has never had the good sense to be afraid, not when Hibari caught him plotting to murder him, not when Mukuro slid home between his legs, not when his client drowned beneath his heel or thrashed when the needle pierced his eye. When he killed a man eleven years ago at the age of fourteen, he knew what he'd done and he hadn't cared. He protected Haru and that was enough for him.

He blinks and his head is under someone's foot. The rain bird lands on his shoulder awkwardly and stares into his eyes, enthralled at its mirrored image. There are voices echoing above him, words like 'kill him', 'keep him', 'cut him', 'destroy him' unimportant as he breathes, his lungs suddenly seizing with frost.

Fly Ageha

The rain bird takes flight and its movement is sudden enough to startle everyone into staring up where the rain pours from under the blue wings, drizzling down their mouths and nostrils, the fire caught in the pale hoarfrost searing them inside out. Inexplicably, Takeshi feels calm even as men topple down around him, the box animals reduced, diminished, their fires no longer as bright. A yellow seal lows mournfully before subsiding; the green-faced mandrill succumbs to sleep.

"You're late." He complains, even as his lips stretch in an irrepressible smile around his mouth. "I'm going to have to charge extra." Mukuro is holding an umbrella, shielding him from the rain. But the water has already matted down his unruly hair and it is hard to see past the squeaky shine of the other man's shoes. So he laughs as Hibari cups his chilled skin.

Ageha thinks this is his best work yet.

.

There are always loose ends.

Haru blames him entirely all the while crying, swearing, wrestling him into bed, cuddling him, fussing over him whenever she is not feeding him, reading to him or seeing to his every need. Mukuro seems delighted at squirreling out another fragment of his past, most of which Hibari withholds for reasons known only to him, and commiserates about what the three of them are to do when Takeshi is better—or when he can sit up without falling over.

Haru seems supportive of his newfound relationship, its seedy origins notwithstanding, and gives them ample time to get to know each other without the protective barrier of sex and falling asleep in between. Takeshi is surprisingly lucid for his condition, the extended exposure to rain flames without an adequate cover. It turns out that the rain bird his pursuers had been holding was the missing Vongola box weapon Mukuro and Hibari had been looking for and his flames had been just attractive enough of an incentive for the falcon—or as it turns out, a simple swallow—to switch sides.

Hibari mutters sarcastically that they were meant for each other as Mukuro grins ruefully and sends it off back to Italy. The rain ring he had in his pocket, the only thing he had been able to save from his apartment before it was set ablaze, he is allowed to keep but he gives it away because he is a professional and nothing ever was promised to him. He likes that Mukuro continues to visit if only to drop off increasingly outrageous gifts—Hibari had turned an about face when he saw the glass dildo on his bedside table—and jokes that he doesn't owe him the ten million yen anymore.

The other man looks sad when he says this but he accredits it to the drugs he's been receiving, a strange cocktail of stimulants and painkillers that makes him feel as though he is floating halfway between the bed and the ceiling.

"He looked for you." At his befuddled look Hibari clarifies, "Your father. He looked for you."

"I know." Takeshi says after a while. "I didn't want to be found."

"Your feelings are hardly relevant."

"Ah... did he...?"

A snort then a, "No"

"Okay."

.

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know. Maybe I can work for you."

"I think I'd rather keep you to myself for a bit longer."

"Ten million yen." He reminds him solemnly and the spell is broken. Mukuro laughs with him and Hibari shoots them both a constipated frown. Haru bursts in, shrieking murder about the traffic and muggy weather. Ageha, Takeshi, is in a private room at a hospital somewhere, surrounded by the only person he loves and the only people he could love. This is a dangerous place, stuck between euphoria and madness, but he thinks it'll be alright. If he closes his eyes. He might keep the dream lasting longer.


End file.
